<Begin Segment 13>

SF: One thing that you mentioned before, was this concept of inu, or persons who...

FM: Informer.

SF: Informer. Was this kind of talk, and was this kind of concern more prevalent in the pre-evacuation days, the Assembly Center days, or in the incarceration camp or internment camp, WRA days?

FM: It's partly a function of the length of time people were together in the Assembly Centers. At "Camp Harmony," for example, we were not there long enough to -- Michi and I -- were not there long enough to know exactly what kind of sentiments developed there. But if it -- we left fairly early, Michi and I -- but if what Shosuke says is true, that there was a feeling that the JACL leaders oughta' be denounced for their activity, why, it wouldn't have been accompanied by feelings that they were inu, and therefore that they should be attacked accordingly. That was the kind of sentiment that developed in the camps.

So, we went to Tule Lake. And the Tule Lake residents were composed largely of the Sacramento population, and a fair part of that population were from the farming areas. Now the people from the Sacramento farming communities came from areas where the Japanese population I would say, had been mistreated -- the Japanese immigrant population -- had been mistreated more badly than almost anywhere else in the Pacific Coast. They were isolated, they were segregated, they were discriminated against, and that I think was the long-term historical experience of the Japanese farming population in the Sacramento Valley. Places like Florin, and Walnut Grove, and so on, were historically known to be that kind of a situation. And I think, for them, there was a stronger feeling of suspicion that the white people would mistreat them, and then anyone who cooperates with the white people, are people who are suspect, because the whites are not a trustworthy population. This, I'm sure, tended to be the kind of prevalent attitude among the Issei farmers of the Sacramento Valley. With good reason in a sense, for feeling that way.

At Tule Lake therefore, there were a lot of people of this background, who felt sure that there must be inu around, who would worm their ways into the hearts of the Japanese community and disclose to the authorities things that the Japanese people -- that is the immigrant, i.e., the evacuee population -- were, might be thinking of. Try to use this kind of information to get advantages for themselves. And these were the people whom they charged with being inu. So there was a widespread feeling in the relocation camps, that there were inu prevalent. Going back to your question, I don't know of the inu concept having been bandied about much before the evacuation or at the Assembly Centers, although, in places like Santa Anita where the Assembly Center remained for six months or more, there probably was the inu feeling. But certainly by the time we got to Tule Lake and people were there for an extended period of time, the sentiment grew very markedly that certain people were those who were collaborating with the administration, and they were charged with being inu.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.